Swan Song
by Alexis Katherine
Summary: When a film composer is killed in a car accident, he asks Melinda to help him find his protégé so she can complete his last project. Can Melinda keep the young woman from making a terrible mistake?
1. Prologue

**Title: **_Swan Song_

**Author: **Alexis Katherine

**Rating: **T

**Disclaimer:** If it's from the show, I don't own it! Jake Sloan belongs to Jen and first appeared in the CSI fic, _Settling the Score_. I offer my most sincere 'thanks' to her for letting me use him in this story. The storyline and incidental characters are mine.

**Summary:** When a film composer is killed in a car accident, he asks Melinda to help him find his protégé so she can complete his last project. The young woman, however, is on the verge of making a terrible mistake.

**Feedback:** Reviews and comments are very, very welcome! I'm new to _Ghost Whisperer_, so I might have take a bit of creative license with the town and such.

**Author's Notes:** I know I have other stories that I haven't updated in a long time. It's been a crazy year. I'm hoping that working in a new area will help me get over the writer's slump that's keeping my other work unfinished.

Dedicated to the real-life Jess. Don't forget us "little people."

* * *

**- Prologue -**

"Thank you for tonight." Melinda Gordon leaned over and kissed her husband on the cheek. "Dinner was wonderful."

Jim Clancy chuckled lightly. "You're welcome. It's not often that we both have a free evening."

"You work too much," Melinda pointed out.

"No, _you_ work too much," Jim countered and Melinda playfully punched his shoulder.

"One weekend a month. Dinner. Maybe a movie. You and me. Is that too much to ask?"

Jim smiled, shook his head. "No, that sounds reasonable." He gestured out the window. "But let's pick a night not in the middle of monsoon season."

Melinda laughed. "April showers bring May flowers," she said with a singsong lilt to her voice.

The SUV slowed and came to a stop at a red light. It was Saturday evening and traffic was always congested near the business district. The weather seemed to magnify the volume.

Melinda looked out at the rain-soaked world with a sigh, watching the cross traffic file through the intersection. The windshield wipers swished back and forth, filling the momentary break. She closed her eyes and felt Jim's hand on her shoulder, massaging softly. She smiled...and then bolted upright.

A icy chill ran down her spine. The kind she got in the presence of certain spirits. The kind she got when something was very, very wrong.

"Jim..." Her voice was a choked whisper.

"What is it?"

And then they heard the collision.

There was a squeal of tires, of rubber skidding on rain-slick pavement, of brakes failing, the sickening crunch of metal on metal, glass shattering.

For whatever reason, the driver of a silver Suburban failed to see the stoplight. He braked too late, too suddenly, and the SUV hydroplaned. It slid through the intersection and plowed into a black BMW. The smaller car recoiled from the impact, skating sideways. It glanced off of the car in front of Jim and Melinda's SUV and came to rest only after it slammed into a light post.

The whole chain of events was over in less than thirty seconds. Melinda watched the scene as if was playing out in slow motion; to her, it felt like thirty minutes. She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until Jim shook her.

"Melinda? Are you alright?"

"Yeah, sorry," she mumbled, stunned by what she had just witnessed. In her line of work, as it were, she often saw the aftereffects of tragedy and death. But she had never witnessed it from this perspective, so violent and sudden. So close...

Jim was still speaking.

"...and I need to go, " he motioned towards the wrecked vehicles, his paramedic training kicking in like second nature. "...survivors will need help..."

Melinda shook her head, clearing away the cobwebs. She nodded, though she hadn't heard what he had said. She didn't need to; she knew Jim. "I'll call 911," she said, reaching for her purse. "Do you want the umbrella?" But Jim had already gone, leaving the door open in his haste.

Through the windshield, Melinda watched as more people appeared on the scene, other passersby who, like herself, had witnessed the accident. Some stood on the periphery, huddled under their umbrellas, looking on. Others moved into the accident scene, probably emergency workers: doctors, nurses, off-duty police officers, firefighters, or EMTS.

The driver of the silver SUV was attempting to climb from his vehicle. Melinda watched as Jim pointed a group of responders in that direction before turning towards the BMW. Another group approached the car in front of Melinda's. It had only received a glancing blow and the occupants were conversing with the first responders through the window.

Melinda dialed 911 and then held the cell phone to her ear.

"911. What is your emergency?" the dispatcher answered, voice crisp, professional.

"I'd like to report an accident...intersection of Fourth and Haggerty..." Melinda reported, taking a deep breath, keeping her voice calm. She answered the dispatcher's questions about the wreck until she was asked, "Do you know how many are injured?"

"I, I'm not sure," Melinda said.

"Two." The voice was male, soft but sure. "The guy in the truck and a passenger in the BMW. The other driver didn't make it."

Melinda repeated the information to the dispatcher, but she could already hear the whine of sirens. She ended the call and, bracing herself with another deep breath, she turned her head, ready to see her source of information. She hoped the voice had come from one of the emergency workers, but she had a sinking, chilling feeling that it hadn't.

A man was standing in the space created by the door Jim had left open. He looked to be in his mid-40s, blond and goateed. He was dressed in black, with a leather jacket and black-framed eyeglasses. He leaned against the side of the SUV, watching as emergency vehicles arrived on the scene, oblivious to the rain. When he turned to look at her, Melinda could see a nasty gash along the side of his head, the blond hair matted with blood. That dismissed any lingering thoughts she had that he might still be among the living.

The driver of the Suburban limped away from his truck, collapsed, and was taken away in an ambulance. Another arrived a few moments later, presumably for the passenger in the BMW. A fire rescue vehicle parked alongside the crumpled sedan and out came the Jaws of Life, the powerful tools used in extracting car crash victims from twisted, crushed metal. Police officers in rain gear where directing the stalled traffic around the accident, shooing away onlookers, and cordoning off the scene for the accident reconstruction team.

Off to the side, there was a commotion, shouts. A woman was trying to push through the police lines, arguing with the officer standing at the perimeter. _A loved one of one of the victims_, Melinda thought.

The blond man was still watching the scene, but his eyes were distant, half-glazed, watching but not really seeing.

She had seen enough. She couldn't do anything for the accident victims, but she could help the man outside her SUV. She focused her attention on him. "My name is Melinda," she said, smiling warmly. "Melinda Gordon."

"I'm..." he started and then stopped, frowned. "I'm..." He stared at her, eyes wide, a genuinely bewildered expression on his face. "I have no idea who I am..." He gave a bemused laugh and shot her an 'I-can't-believe-this-is-happening-to-me-look.' "Hold on," he said. He patted his hip pockets, first one and then the other. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and came up empty. "My wallet's gone."

"Don't worry. You're in shock," Melinda said softly, gently. "It happens. You'll start to remember things soon." _But you may wish you hadn't_. "Names are usually the first thing that comes back." She didn't see the need to point out that his wallet was most likely still in the car with his former body.

He gave her a curious look.

"I have a...gift. It's a long story." She shrugged, palms up.

The blond man fell silent and didn't press for any more of an explanation.

Over at the accident site, the passenger from the BMW was being loaded into an awaiting ambulance. Melinda watched as a third vehicle pulled up, a dark blue van. COUNTY CORONER was stenciled on the side in bold white letters.

"The driver didn't make it," the man said, mostly to himself, his voice barely a whisper. "_I_ didn't make it." And then he was gone.

* * *

How am I doing? R&R and let me know! 

- TBC -


	2. Haunted

**Disclaimers:** Not mine. Don't sue.

See previous chapter for full header information.

**- I -**

**"Haunted"**

Andrea Moreno sighed as she sealed up the box and placed it on the table alongside a half-dozen others going to the same customer in Chicago. Since putting photographs of some of their more expensive and rare inventory online, business had been brisk at Same As It Never Was. Brisk business was good business.

But brisk business also meant late nights.

Her Chinese take-out had long since grown cold. The radio station that had been keeping her company had switched to its after-hours classical format. Soft piano strains drifted from the speakers.

She glanced at the clock. Half past ten. Only one more box to pack and prep for shipping in the morning. She would be out of here by eleven, at the latest. Still, it was later than she had planned to be here. After all, she was opening in the morning. Melinda was in earlier - how long ago had she gone home?

She could clearly remember Melinda leaving and Andrea herself saying, "I'm right behind you." That was two, three hours ago, at least.

Just one more box to pack and then all the shipments would be ready to go out first thing in the morning. Searching around, she couldn't locate the last item, a lamp. _I must have left it out front_, she thought wearily. She headed for the main showroom, humming softly to herself along with the radio.

"La da la da la da la da dah..." Some tune by Beethoven or Bach, one of the B's, she thought. She was certain it had been used recently in a television commercial and the original composer probably wasn't receiving any royalties off of it. She reached for the volume knob to turn the radio up. The dial turned smoothly in her hand, but the radio was silent.

She got a low, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as it dawned on her that the radio was turned off, had been turned off for some time.

The soft piano music was still emanating from the front of the building and that stopped her cold.

There was an old upright piano that sat against the wall in the rear of the showroom. For as long as she could remember, the piano had been in the store, dropped off in the early days, having belonged to someone's great-grandmother. Andrea wasn't even sure if it still worked.

But it was playing - being played - now.

Had she not been scared, she might have recognized the beauty of the tune and the instrument. Ancient as it was, it was very nearly in tune and still capable of producing wonderful music.

Every instinct in her body told her to run but she took a tentative step towards the front. There was always a chance that some human intruder - albeit, a musically gifted one - had managed to get in without triggering the security alarm. It was possible.

She hadn't heard the alarm, glass breaking, items shuffled about, or any of the other tell-tale sounds that would indicate a burglar in the antique shop.

_Should I call the cops? Melinda?_

That hollow feeling in her stomach indicated to her that whoever was out there was probably more along Melinda's line of expertise, not the police department's.

She found a Louisville Slugger on a nearby shelf and her fingers tightly circled the grip. She had never played baseball, but Andrea was certain she could swing it and make contact, if she had to. _If there's something, someone, to make contact with_.

The music had tuned melancholy. The simple refrain was familiar and, as she listened, moving forward in millimeters, she couldn't quite place it, though the title was on the tip of her tongue, figuratively speaking. _What is this song?_

Andrea flattened herself against the wall, squaring her shoulders. The bat was carefully poised on her shoulder. _Here goes nothing..._

With a half-primal yell, she pivoted on the ball of one foot and swung around the corner.

There was a crash of cacophonous chords from the piano, as if a startled pianist had slammed his or her hands down on the keys.

Then the store was still, silent. The piano sat as if it had never been touched.

Andrea was not surprised, really, to find the front door was securely locked and bolted. She lowered the bat and quickly walked back to the storage room.

The unfinished shipment was still spread out on the table. The last carton was still unfilled.

"It can wait," Andrea told her herself. She grabbed her coat and hurried out the back door.

"_The driver didn't make it_. _I didn't make it."_

Melinda woke with a start. Her heart was pounding, seeming to echo in the stillness of her bedroom. She wiped an arm across her face and it came away wet. She had been crying. Her dream - her nightmare - had been so real...

She had been having the dream off and on for four weeks, ever since witnessing the fatal car crash. It was the same each time. She saw a silver SUV, monstrously out of proportion, barreling down on the car she and Jim were riding in.

"_The driver didn't make it_." That was what the real driver - an out-of-towner named Jacob Sloan, according to the newspapers - had said to her. Only, in her dream, it was Jim who spoke those words, Jim who stared at her with haunted eyes, Jim with the horrible gash on the side of his head. Jim...

...who was sleeping soundly beside her. She watched his chest rise and fall, his breaths even and slow. He was okay. She was okay. 

The clock on the nightstand glowed red in the darkness: 12:02. Her throat suddenly felt dry; she needed some water. Careful not to disturb her husband, Melinda swung her legs over the side of the bed and softly slipped out of the room.

Downstairs, she flipped on the kitchen light. She took a bottle of drinking water from the refrigerator, unscrewed the cap, and drank deeply. Her throat was parched and she felt as if she had been running a marathon.

Four weeks.

Closing the fridge, she located a folded newspaper article taped to the doors. She had clipped it from the paper and saved it, though she wasn't quite sure why. It had appeared in the paper the morning following the wreck, below the fold but on the front page. The headline solemnly announced:

**HOLLYWOOD COMPOSER KILLED IN EVENING CRASH**

Jacob Sloan was the man's name and he was apparently a popular composer of music for blockbuster films. The name rang no bells in Melinda's mind. However, Andrea was familiar with his music. A music buff to begin with, she was the kind of person who read all of the opening credits at the movies.

The article briefly mentioned how Sloan had been in Grandview visiting an old friend, an independent film director who had shot his movie in town. That, Melinda remembered because traffic had been snarled for two days in front of her store. The director, Michael Dorsey, had been the passenger in the BMW. The article listed him in _'serious but stable condition.'_ The Suburban driver, a local man named Padgett, was treated and released.

The article listed Sloan's filmography and talked of his current project with Dorsey, but there were few personal details mentioned, save that he had a wife and son, and that his California funeral would be closed to the public.

There were only few paragraphs in the paper a week later, when Dorsey was released from the hospital. They rehashed the same material, nothing new, and nothing about the dead man's life. The accident put Grandview on the national map for a day or two at most, and then the world went on.

But Melinda could not forget.

She could still see the man's eyes, blue-gray, pained. They were not the eyes of a spirit at peace, her experience told her that. She expected to see him in the days following the accident, but he didn't show up, didn't come to her for help. Deep down, she hoped that he had been able to cross over.


End file.
